Caterham Turns to Water-Powered Batteries

Caterham will equip its electric sports coupe prototype, Project V, with immersion-cooled batteries.

Caterham, owned by the Japanese automotive group VT Holdings, unveiled the Project V concept car at a world premiere at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in the UK in July 2023, followed by the Tokyo Auto Show in Japan in January 2024.

Project V is an electric sports coupe that inherits Caterham’s DNA: lightweight, simple, and fun to drive. For mass production and commercialization, Caterham is currently working on a prototype with its partners TOKYO R&D Co and Yamaha, aiming to present a refined version to the public by 2025.

Following the October announcement of using a powertrain and transmission developed by Yamaha, the project takes a new step with the decision to use an immersion-cooled battery developed by XING Mobility.

XING Mobility’s immersion-cooled battery stands out from traditional models, or those simply cooled by water circulation, thanks to exceptional thermal dissipation and high energy density. The immersion cooling technology, in which cells are directly immersed in a dielectric liquid, ensures a higher safety level through rapid and uniform heat dissipation and boasts an outstanding energy density of 200 Wh/kg. Founded in 2015, XING Mobility is a global leader in this battery technology with a manufacturing plant in Taiwan.

Beyond the technical aspect, the involvement of two mobility giants, Yamaha and XING, lends genuine credibility to this project. Could the lightweight electric sports car we’ve been waiting for so long finally come from this Anglo-Japanese manufacturer? The next public appearance of Project V will be in January 2025, when it returns to the Tokyo Motor Show in Japan.

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